Screensaver could find smallpox treatment

Electromagnetic News Report, Jul/Aug 2003

DB2magazine reports that a simple Screensaver may help find a treatment for smallpox. DB2 Universal Database (UDB) plays a key role in a grid-computing project funded by IBM and the U.S. Department of Defense that uses idle computer resources to help develop drugs to fight the viral illness.

The Smallpox Research Grid Project follows a model similar to one used by the SETI@home project, in which donated computers search for extra terrestrial intelligence. In both projects, a downloaded Screensaver taps resources on the idle computer and pools them with other Internet-connected computers to form a grid.

The pooled resources for the smallpox project will be used to analyze chemical interactions between a library of 35 million potential drag molecules and several protein targets on the smallpox virus. The virtual supercomputer created by the grid can analyze billions of molecules in a fraction of the time it would take in a laboratory. The program will send results back to a data center powered by IBM eServer p690s running DB2 UDB.

DB2 will handle 15 million SQL queries a day and manage all aspects of data provided by 2 million participating computers. Accelrys, a life sciences software developer, is providing the high-throughput docking and scoring software used to screen compounds.

For details, visit www.grid.org.